Monitor 7 questions: should mid driver be mw6500 or mw6502?

Thanks for your input/response Gardenstater, I guess I'll try and be patient and shop around for a used mw6500. You are clearly more educated on the crossovers/recapping piece of these vintage speakers than I am. Is it correct to assume that the crossovers are designed for the same mid driver (6500) and it would make no sense to recap before I am able to find a 6500 to replace the 6502?

Recap update with new questions (just what you've been waiting for)! I was able to track down an MW6500 driver, and I was pleased that I was able to successfully recap the 7's as I had not done that before. I decided to go more of a budget route with caps as I saw numerous posts of others who had done that and were satisfied. I used a Jantzen Cross Cap for the 12uF and Standard Z-Cap for the 33uF cap. I also used one Jantzen resistor and one Mills resistor. Unfortunately, the speakers for the most part sound the same. Dull highs even with the Peerless tweeters and bass that should be tighter. When I compare the recapped 7's with my original 5's the 5's have crisper highs and tighter bass, even with the flawed sl2000 tweeter. Doing the recap I did notice something that raised a red flag. The caps for the high frequency looked original but did not appear to be the same uF. I'll attach a picture to show. So have I stumbled across some 7's that had some work done already, and is there something else to consider to get them to sound up to their potential? Or was using Jantzen caps a big mistake? Any input is appreciated.

pitdogg2 you're probably right but it was still a surprise to see the different caps that appeared to be original in the two crossovers. The speakers do have a store sticker on the back of them so maybe they had been reconditioned with available mix and match parts at one time.

F1nut you're also probably right about the cap choice. I'll give these time to break in and if I'm still unsatisfied maybe I'll replace the high frequency caps with the sonicaps that you and others suggested. There were a number of satisfied recappers though who had used budget options like Dayton and Jantzen who shared their stories here and on other forums which is why I decided to give that option a try.

Gardenstater I should have looked for those dates on the crossovers but did not. When I take them apart again I'll check. The stickers on the back of the speakers are from "Sound Company", a no longer in business audio shop in San Diego. I suppose it's possible they got a hold of these years ago and used whatever parts they had on hand to replace non working components in order to sell them. Although it did not look like the board had been desoldered/resoldered.

Thanks again for your input all, it's much appreciated.

I test the speakers in a spare room where I have an older 100 wpc Yamaha receiver. I have a pair of Monitor 5's and 10's and compared both of those to the recapped 7's. The 10's and 5's sounded great so I think the receiver is sufficient.

Gardenstater it's the 7's that have the Peerless tweeters and had the wrong driver until I replaced it, so it's pretty clear they've been worked on before. I will go through them again to see if they are wired properly. I didn't really need another pair of vintage Polks but the Peerless tweeters are what drew me in. I have upgraded the sl2000 tweeters in two sets of speakers but still find the old sl2000 acceptable for a couple reasons. I don't really crank the volume very often, and as my audiologist friend tells me, at my age of 68 I probably can't hear frequencies above 10k anyway!